


Working Relationship

by RoseCathy



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: M/M, Pre-Series, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-13
Updated: 2014-08-13
Packaged: 2018-02-12 23:52:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2129148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseCathy/pseuds/RoseCathy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-series (slightly altered timeline). Rimmer has little luck with the ladies; Lister offers to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rendering Assistance

The rumours were rampant. Raging. Out of control.

Arnold Rimmer had finally pulled; that much was certain. The details, however, were a shambles even among the most renowned gossip-mongers. Most of them agreed: The (un)lucky lady had been Yvonne McGruder. A few claimed that Rimmer had been uncharacteristically brave and/or pissed beyond belief as he approached McGruder; others insisted that she had made the first move.

Whatever the truth, Lister knew it had not gone terribly well, because it was now the next evening and Rimmer was getting drunk in their quarters.

“I’m cursed, you know.” There was no slur in his voice yet, just slightly more pathos than usual. “Totally, indubitably cursed.”

“Cursed?”

Rimmer knocked back another whisky. “You know what I mean. Or maybe you don’t,” he added with a reddened glare, “Mr ‘I’ve Shagged Hundreds of Women at Age 20’.”

“Hey! I have not shagged _hundreds_ of women,” Lister protested. “And I’m 25, I keep telling you.”

“Yeah, sssomething like that.” There it was, the first slur. “Meanwhile, here’s me, already 30.”

“You’re 31.”

“Whatever. 30 yearsss…and what - what’ve I got to show for it? A romantic history of such insss - insin - insignif - oh, who cares.” _Slurp._

“Well, why _do_ you care?” Lister couldn’t resist taking the piss. “I thought you went in for all that Love Celibates smeg. What was it, ‘Love is demanding, love is crazy’?”

“Cruel. Love is _cruel_ ,” Rimmer corrected testily. “And that’ssh nothing to do with…with…”

“Sex?”

“Yesh, that.”

“See, you can’t even say it.”

“Shut up.”

“You know, sex requires a certain amount of character, Rimmer,” Lister teased in an uncanny imitation of Captain Hollister’s voice. “A certain amount of maturity.”

“Shut up, Lishter.”

“Like being able to say the word. Try it now — SEX.”

Rimmer groaned and pretended to pass out with his forehead stuck to the table.

  


Lister felt sorry for him, Rimmer could tell. Even so, what he was suggesting went farther than too far.

Firstly, he had kissed plenty of girls in his time, thank you so very much. His boyhood and twenties had not been entirely wasted, although most (all) of those dalliances had failed to develop into anything more. Nonetheless, it was rude of Lister to imply that inferior technique might have had something to do with it.

“Of course it’s not only that,” Lister lectured. “The fact that you’re a total smeghead might also have something to do with it. You want my advice - ”

“I don’t.”

“Stop smegging about with the Love Celibates. Forget the hypnosis and whatever other crap you read. _Practise._ ”

“With you.”

“Yes, with me.”

Rimmer ran through the catalogue of accusations he could make. Desperate? No, that was weak; Lister was indeed a man of experience, and women seemed to throw themselves at him regardless of his slobbiness. It was all a big prank? Possible. Back to desperate - wait a smegging second. He narrowed his eyes at Lister.

“This is about Kochanski, isn’t it?”

Result! Lister actually flinched. “What about Kochanski?” he muttered.

“You’re desperate and lonely because she dumped you. You just want to use me as…as some sort of _outlet_ , you slimy git.”

Unfortunately, the insult inflicted no damage. “All right, fine, I’m lonely. We both are.” It was Rimmer’s turn to flinch. “So what if we have some fun between girls and prepare you for, y’know, next time?”

“If that’s your chat-up line, it’s pathetic!”

Lister held up his hands apologetically. “All right, man, I’m sorry. I don’t want to argue about it, I just thought…”

Once every 6-8 years, Arnold Rimmer surprised himself by doing something reckless; he calculated that it had been about eight years since the last instance.

Lister, clearly thrown, laughed softly as they parted. “What’s - ” Too late; he was swept into another kiss, and judging by the way he responded, he had little to complain about regarding Rimmer’s skills.

“Well?” Rimmer sniffed.

The Cheshire-Cat smile and didactic tone were a disturbing combination. “If you want my honest opinion, it was too aggressive. You need to start out gentle, maybe do this with your hand as you…”

  


The heavy, erratic footfalls heralded one of two things: Either Lister would sing loudly and long into the night, or he would talk a load of nonsense before passing out. Rimmer didn’t bother asking himself why he didn’t leave the room or why he listened instead of putting in earplugs. The first was because he had nowhere else to go; the second was because he had nothing better to do.

He happened to be at the sink, examining his reflection. Lister had made an offhanded remark about his hair — how it would look better (to girls, he was careful to clarify) if he used less gel. Curls were deemed attractive. Allegedly.

Lister stumbled in, bleating that song about the miner’s daughter. He toppled face-first into the lower bunk before Rimmer could stop him.

The last time this had happened, his fingers had automatically reached for his notebook and pen. Now, however - 

“Lister, kindly vacate my bunk.”

“Nnph.”

“Lister, get _out_ before I put you on report!”

Lister turned his head just enough to speak unobstructed; most of his face was buried in Rimmer’s pillow. “Smeg off, man.”

As Rimmer wasn’t strong enough to haul Lister’s dead weight off the mattress, it was a pointless exercise that ended with him retreating to the top bunk in a sulk. He didn’t object to bunk decorations as a rule, not at all, but the cacophony of colours combined with the mess made his head throb.

“Why didn’t Krissie like me?”

So tonight was going to be a talking night, and what a wonderful choice of subject.

“Why’ssshe with - with - with - ”

“Tim,” Rimmer supplied so that Lister would move the smeg on from the _with_ s.

“She’s so smart, you know? So pretty…the way she laughs…” Lister himself dissolved into beer-soaked giggles that made Rimmer’s hair stand on end. The pillow he wished he could put over his head reeked of the cigarettes that Lister was discourteous enough to smoke in bed.

“Still,” Lister drawled, his tone suddenly sombre, “ _you_ ’re pretty.”

Rimmer’s head snapped up. _What the smeg?_

“You’re pretty,” Lister repeated as though he’d heard the question. “’S anyone told you…got lovely eyes? Love - lovely. So lovely.”

No, no one had ever told him that.

“’S always been girls, like, but y’know I’m - I’m an open-minded sort of bloke. I wouldn’t mind.” A long, low laugh. Rimmer peeked cautiously over one arm, wondering what exactly Lister wouldn’t mind; his eyes were still closed. “Wouldn’t mind…the other way round, know what I mean?”

Surprise, horror, and revulsion washed over Rimmer in quick succession, and then something else, something that tugged deep inside his - another high-pitched giggle interrupted the cascade. He curled into himself and tried to will his brain to _stop thinking._

“Yeah. I like kissing you. Real…really nice. Like to…find out what you’re like.” Rimmer’s hands had started to tremble violently; during the long silence that followed this latest declaration, he pushed them hard into the mattress to stop them slapping him in the face. He was just beginning to feel the strain in his arms when Lister added in a possibly would-be-seductive rasp, “To know how you _feel_.”

Rimmer’s right hand came up and clapped itself over his mouth before the squeaky gasp could make its way through. He stayed like that during the first few snores, which started up after a final giggle.

10 wordless minutes ticked by before he decided it was safe to breathe again.

The fact that someone wanted him that way ought to have produced some sort of feeling. The warm fuzzies, perhaps. Or disgust, since it was _Lister._ Instead, there was only an awful emptiness that radiated down to his bones.

Their little game was a farce. If Lister’s complaint were mere loneliness, he could get off with any number of girls. He either pitied Rimmer mightily or — more likely — needed a new source of amusement and had settled on “helping” Rimmer. And just now, he’d been off his face, so what he’d said was meaningless, not to mention perverted.

Despite all the bedding and sundry items, the bunk felt like a deserted cave. Rimmer shivered and hugged himself close, trying to feel something other than cold and unmoored; he had no one to do it for him, after all.

  


Rimmer rarely saw 0600 on a Saturday. Although he often made a show of setting early alarms, he liked sleep too much to get up at such an indecent hour on a day off. Obviously, an exception was in order for a genuine emergency like this one.

As he crept out of the room, he verified with a glance over his shoulder that Lister was still out cold. That suited him just fine; the last thing he needed was for Lister to wake up and continue with his horrifying declarations from the previous night. Or (claim to) have forgotten all about them.

He didn’t know which would be worse.

  


Lister’s humming was the loudest it had ever been. People in the corridors actually turned to frown at him as he walked by.

Rimmer didn’t feel like making the effort to scold or threaten. They’d had a tiring shift, and if he said anything, something else loud and stupid would replace the humming anyhow. He quickened his step to keep up with Lister, whose entire body seemed abuzz with energy.

“Lock!” Lister called the second they both stepped inside. He reached for Rimmer before a single word of reluctance could escape through the lips he’d been daydreaming about.

He lost himself in slippery-soft textures and occasional nips, and in the way they stood pressed together, chests taut with the strength they were exerting as if to absorb each other. Oh, he felt so alive when they did this, especially because Rimmer came alive as well, his customary stiffness replaced by a warm enthusiasm.

But Rimmer was never the one to initiate and always the one to break it off. He couldn’t shake the feeling that they were doing something illicit, not to mention fleeting — there _had_ been an original purpose.

“So, how was that, Listy?” he asked lightly. “Am I ready to venture back out into the dating world?”

Lister felt something unpleasant creep onto his tongue, a bitter taste that had nothing to do with the kiss. Nevertheless, he kept smiling; it was hard not to, faced with rumpled curls and shining eyes. “Very nice,” he replied in a casual tone to match Rimmer’s. “You’re almost ready.”

“Almost?”

“See, all we’ve done is kiss,” he explained, thinking fast. “You were really more worried about the other stuff. You know, what comes after kissing.”

Rimmer could have sworn he felt the colour drain from his own face. “After kissing,” he repeated for lack of anything else to say. So what Lister had blabbed that night was - 

“And you think you can help me with that, do you? Which is total nonsense, anyway, considering you’re not a girl,” he gabbled. “How would it - you - how would it help?”

Lister grinned lecherously. “I know what girls like.”

“Still.”

“And it’s not just about that. Sex,” he added sternly, no doubt to make Rimmer cringe, “also involves knowing what _you_ like. I don’t think you know, man. I don’t think you’ve got a smegging clue.”

Lister hadn’t intended to goad Rimmer into revealing his innermost thoughts, so he was truly taken aback when it happened: “Why won’t you just admit that you want me?”


	2. Further

Rimmer resented Lister’s equanimity, he really did. The smallest flicker of unease and a shrug were all he showed as he admitted, “You’re right.”

There was only one logical response to this. “Why?”

“Why not?”

“You don’t like me,” Rimmer pointed out reasonably. “Not five minutes ago, we had a row about the way you make the trolley wheels squeak.”

“That’s different.”

“How is it different?”

Lister sighed. “It’s like…” He stood on his toes and kissed Rimmer lightly on the lips. “It’s simple. When we do this, yeah, it’s good. It makes me want to do more. I don’t know how else to explain it. But, I mean, if you don’t feel the same…” Another shrug.

Rimmer shook with trepidation. He didn’t want to. He didn’t _want to_ want this. Yet ever since Lister’s drunken confession, his brain and body had indulged regularly in half-formed dreams about the electricity that sparked between them when they kissed, as well as the - the - oh, all right, the erection he sometimes felt pressing against his thigh. He hadn’t let himself think about what it might mean.

“Fine,” he squeaked out before he could lose his nerve. “Fine.”

Lister’s face brightened, but he took a cautious step back. “Are you sure?”

Rimmer had no words left for further discussion. Instead, he let out a sound of assent or impatience — it was hard to tell — which was immediately swallowed in a fierce kiss. He fumbled with Lister’s shirt, encouraged by the motions of the hands tearing at his own clothes, and groped around until his palms met flesh. When Lister moaned and rubbed shamelessly against him, he couldn’t help making noises of his own, delighted noises that expressed just how novel and wonderful it was to be desirable. Desired. Whichever.

A moment later, he found himself sprawled in his bunk, panting, trousers at his knees and hands gripping the sheets. It was so close, this abyss he’d agreed to jump into; it was natural to have questions. 

“Have you done this before?”

“You what? You know I haven’t,” Lister laughed and kissed him. “Oh, I get it. You’re going to ask how I know what to do.”

He was, but that was silly. Of course Lister knew what to do. He had his own equipment to practise on, all his experience of being on the other end. Speaking of ends…a hand was stroking him carefully up and down. Down, up. Down, up, over. And over and over. And less carefully. He bit at Lister’s lips and neck to anchor himself to something. When that didn’t work, he grasped blindly at the warm skin he’d felt earlier.

He whined in protest as the hands that had been tending to him covered his own instead and placed them in the vicinity of… _it._ It was about as heavy and hot as he’d imagined. He couldn’t bring himself to look, so he settled for looking into Lister’s eyes and mapping by feel. At least he had some idea of what to do here. A squeeze, a twist over the tip, then another, and so on.

Still, it was with astonishment that he took in Lister’s reactions — the gasps and bitten-off groans and increasingly messy kisses. He’d done that. He was making someone thrust against him, whispering _please, please, like that, more like that, oh god_ , or was that his own voice making those pleas? For all he knew, this was an over-the-top wet ( _very_ wet) dream, and if so, he was already hoping he’d have it again.

The second time — and then the third, when mouths met cocks for the first time — he made sure to commit every single detail to memory.

  


Lister had a knack for broaching tricky subjects in the wrong context. Only he could turn around mid-cuddle and state with eerie calmness, “I think I’d like you to do me.”

For once, Rimmer was truly lost for words. His thoughts consisted of a few dots on a vast blank surface.

Lister smiled sheepishly. “Sorry. Too shocking?”

It took a full minute for Rimmer to remember a word. “Why?” 

The question was always _why._ Why him? Why Rimmer, the total smeghead? Why Lister?

And the answer was always _because._ Because they shared a bed now as well as caresses and long-hidden tales from their childhoods. Because Rimmer had taken Lister’s advice about his hair. Because Lister had toned down his perpetual slobbiness.

Because Lister wanted it, wanted Rimmer in ways neither of them had considered until recently, and Rimmer was addicted to being wanted.

  


“I got us some supplies.” Lister sounded entirely too normal for someone who was waving around an assortment of luridly packaged items from the sex shop (not that Rimmer had ever stepped foot in there; he’d looked, that was all).

“Lock!” he ordered hastily. Thank smeg for voice-activated doors. “You’ve, you’ve certainly prepared for, erm - ” _For an extensive evening of buggering. Oh god oh god oh god._

“Hey.” Lister dropped the _supplies_ on the table and patted his arm. “Hey. We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

The sane part of Rimmer readied his mouth to say _Of course I don’t want to, you goit._ The idea was ridiculous on its face. This was a man, and even putting that aside, this was _Lister._ Who was insane enough to request actual, real, horribly intimate sex with him. There was something wrong with a universe that allowed such things to happen.

Despite all that, he wanted it so badly that he was getting short of breath just thinking about it.

Lister clearly felt the same, the way he pulled Rimmer top of him and lay spread open, begging him with his eyes and mouth and hands to _do it, fuck me, let me feel you._. Because enthusiasm couldn’t compensate for all of their inexperience, Rimmer might have lost his nerve several times if not for Lister urging him on through the pain and fumbling. He felt nearly helpless as it was — his mind was almost blank, much as it had been when Lister had first asked for this. 

It was inconceivable that any of it was real, yet it _was_. He was thrusting properly now, and Lister was making new sounds, greedy sounds that matched perfectly with the digging of his fingernails. They turned into a high-pitched moan (of disappointment?) when Rimmer let go, much sooner than he’d wanted to, then quieted down to short gasps as their foreheads came together.

“I need, I need - I - ” Rimmer tried to nod — _I know._ Lister thrashed and pushed desperately against their hands, obviously frustrated. Rimmer tore his mind away from the painful pressure around his cock. He had to hold on just a little longer, until - and there it was, the reward he’d been waiting for, Lister crying out (dare he say shouting?) and finally, finally relaxing in his arms.

He remembered to press a kiss to Lister’s face as they settled down. He was getting better at that sort of thing. 

Lister smiled appreciatively in his sleep.


	3. Four Times Olaf Petersen Was Drunk

Olaf Petersen liked a drink. While he claimed he could drink four times as much as the average human did and still go about his duties, the truth was that he lived in a state of continual confusion. It had got to the point where even his best mates no longer took any story he told seriously, so blurred were his recollections.

The first time, he’d been the last one standing, literally. Selby and Chen had long dozed off at the Copacabana, noses in their respective empty glasses, so he was wandering the corridors with a double whisky for company.

Company. Come to think of it, why hadn’t Lister been out with them?

“ _Here?_ Why here?”

Petersen poked his head round the corner to investigate. As he’d suspected, the nasal voice belonged to Lister’s smeghead of a bunkmate, who was hovering outside a teaching room with Lister. How odd. Was Dave taking night classes?

“Well, you know, just…so many options,” he was saying, gesturing grandly inside the open door. “There’s that big armchair. The table. The wall.”

Rimmer fidgeted uncomfortably under Lister’s expectant stare. “I - I rather think we’re getting ahead of ourselves, Lister,“ he stammered. “Those things are a bit, er, advanced, aren’t they?”

“Exactly! How can we learn unless we try new things?” Lister coaxed.

What were they were going on about? Advanced, learn, new things — since when was Lister the studious type? He shook his head to try to clear his confusion, which came flooding back at the next thing (he thought) he saw: Lister gently stroking Rimmer’s side. A few hard blinks later, the door was closed and they were nowhere to be seen.

He woke up at noon the next day with no memory of the evening.

\------

Red Dwarf was due to stop off on Titan soon. Very soon. Ish. The precise dates were far less important than planning how best to fill them.

Petersen held court in Lister’s room with the usual suspects gathered round the table. Rimmer was there too, reading in his bunk, although he was obviously not part of the discussion.

“Monopoly board,” Selby suggested, thumping the table for emphasis.

“But we’re not going to London,” Chen replied, confused.

“Doesn’t matter. We’ll make our own board.”

Petersen took another belt of whisky to celebrate his friend’s brilliance. “Yes, yes! All we need is a map and something - a square-y something.”

“What d’you reckon, Davey?” Selby crowed. “Titan Monopoly, innit?”

“Hmm?” Lister was fiddling with his hat, apparently lost in thought. “Oh, yeah, man, brilliant. Just leave us a day or two at the end. For recovery, like.”

 _Recovery?_ Preposterous. Lister was 25, not 55. Petersen opened his mouth to say as much, but got distracted by something even more perturbing: An exchange of glances between Lister and Rimmer, followed by the biggest smirk he’d ever seen on the smeghead’s face.

\------

It was a bad day. He’d been told off the night before (or had it been two nights before? Three? Sometime within the last week, definitely) for incinerating 50 roasts, and he was down to his last cigarette.

Lister always had cigarettes to spare. However, unbeknownst to Petersen, it was early Sunday morning when he set out on his quest. He noticed with only the faintest of surprise that the corridors were deserted. Lister would be up and about and dancing, though, surely; he was a ball of energy, even if he’d been strangely eager lately to leave whatever bar they were in once the clock struck two.

Hallelujah! The door was open. Lister’s room, like most of the other areas he’d passed through, was quiet. His eyes travelled from the top bunk (empty) once around the room. No one at home. Then what was stirring down by those dreadlocks? Ah, _there_ he was, curled up in the lower bunk for reasons that Petersen could not hope to fathom.

“Lister?” No one answered. He tried a whine: “Listeeeer.”

“What’s that?” a deep voice muttered from the depths of the bunk.

“Liiisteeer.”

Lister tossed his head and groaned, “Holly! Quit taking the smeg, man. It’s Sunday.”

“Dave, it’s me!” Petersen croaked in protest.

“C’mere,” said the deeper voice. Petersen stepped forward, confused, and saw an arm come up and wrap itself around Lister’s head, which disappeared under the duvet. Which seemed to have been pulled up by an invisible hand.

It didn’t occur to Petersen until some thirty minutes later, after he’d completed the slow march of disappointment back to his own quarters, that there might have been someone else in the room.

\------

He was relatively sober, for him. The night was young, life was passable, he’d successfully chatted up a girl who looked like a movie star…star? Hmm. Stars. He’d never gone to the Observation Dome to really look at them, and what better time than the present? It was Friday night (he was 80% sure it was, anyway), so no one else was likely to be up there.

He saw midway through his climb that he’d been wrong — there were two people already standing at the top. Lister and Rimmer, again. By themselves, again. Lister caressing Rimmer’s side…again? The gesture looked more familiar than it should.

“I love you.”

Rimmer started and took a step back. Petersen unconsciously copied his movements.

“I love you,” Lister repeated softly.

Before Petersen could process this, Rimmer took another step back and started shaking his head, leaving Lister looking up at him rather foolishly. Still, he reached out and steadied Rimmer’s face in his hands. “I want us to be _us_ , be together properly,” he pleaded. “I don’t want to hide it anymore. I mean, I love being with you, you know that. And we’re so…what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s - ” Rimmer modulated his voice and tried again. “Nothing’s wrong. It’s just, I thought it was…”

“What?”

“You know. Just…sex.”

Petersen decided at this point that he was definitely on the mother of all drug trips; from what, he didn’t know or care. He might as well stay where he was and ride out the hallucination.

“That’s - it was - it _was_ , but - ” Then again, it wasn’t the most enjoyable of hallucinations. Lister looked crushed now, and he sounded like he was about to choke on his own voice. “So - so you’re saying - what, that you don’t feel anything for me? Anything at all?”

“I…that’s…”

“Or is it - is it because I’m a bloke? Is this, like…some sort of big denial thing?”

Rimmer bristled at that. “It is not - look, Lister, you’ve always known about my…views,” he said, hands flopping comically in an attempt to illustrate something. “You know I don’t believe in all that. That stuff you just talked about.”

“What do you - you’ve _got_ to be kidding, Rimmer!” Lister exploded. “When’s the last time you went to a Love Celibates meeting? When’s the last time you even thought about them? You can’t honestly…you…”

Lister must have seen something that Petersen couldn’t from his vantage point, because he gave up in the middle of the sentence. He turned his back on Rimmer, trembling, and began to run at full pelt toward the stairs. Petersen hastily swung himself toward the floor to avoid a fatal accident.

Drug trip or not, he waited at the bottom of the staircase. It was his responsibility as a friend to get Lister as drunk as humanly possible, as soon as humanly possible.


	4. Standstill

Lister told himself that he didn’t care one iota what Rimmer got up to on Titan. He clearly planned to disembark — he’d packed a small trunk — but Lister didn’t care, nor did he mind that their plans for shore leave had gone from sweetly tentative to useless. It served him right for falling in lo - for getting involved with such a smeghead.

The past week had been excruciating. No words beyond the few that were necessary for work, not even hellos or goodnights. They both avoided their quarters as much as possible, and Lister made sure to stay out late every evening so that the lights were out by the time he returned. When the worst of the bitterness hit, he bit his tongue to keep from asking Rimmer how he slept at night.

But what really smegged Lister off was the way Rimmer looked at him. There was no trace of anything nice in those hazel eyes now, only a constant telegraphed message of _Stay away from me._ It made him feel like he was shrivelling.

And, he had to admit — he missed the sex. A lot. Although he didn’t blush easily, his face did grow hot whenever he recalled the hours he’d spent in the lower bunk and elsewhere, pushing and clawing and demanding _more, more, kiss me, touch me, fuck me harder_ because the universe was certain to implode if he didn’t get what he wanted. Once or twice, he’d even been brought to tears by the ecstasy of knowing this part of Rimmer, the part that cared about something other than advancing his career. The part that shielded Lister’s ears from the blare of the morning alarm after one of their long nights together. Their shared bed had felt so secure, and all Lister had wanted was for it to _be_ that secure.

The cat, too, was looking for security after her itinerant young life. A wave of her tail, a blink of her big bright eyes, and Lister was in love. She didn’t bat his affection away with her velvety black paws.

He had never been one for regulations. He needed her, she needed him, so it was goodbye to Titan for her and, as he discovered later, her babies.

  


Lister felt a pang of guilt at Frankenstein’s blasé expression, which suggested that he wasn’t doing enough to serve her in her time of need. He swept her up in a hug, careful not to jostle her belly too much, and cooed, “Wanna look out the window, Frankie? Wanna see the stars? Eh? Go on, then…oof, you’re getting big!”

It wasn’t to be. Lister was distracted by Frankie’s wriggling, while Rimmer was in the process of striding into the room with his usual briskness. The collision was inevitable.

Confronted at close range with a scent he’d rather forget, Lister tried to stamp out the memory of a previous time he’d forgotten to lock the door. They’d got halfway through stripping each other before Rimmer had noticed…

“So it’s true.”

“What is?”

“That you’ve got an unquarantined animal. Do you realise _I_ could get in trouble as well? Do you know what the penalty is for smuggling one of those on board? Stasis for - ”

“Rimmer, I don’t give two good smegs about the penalty!” Lister interrupted. This was so like Rimmer. He hadn’t said two words since Lister had had the gall to confess his feelings, but break one silly rule and creak went the floodgates.

“Fine,” Rimmer replied curtly, eyes pointed somewhere over Lister’s head. “I was just warning you. Holly knows.”

 _Smeg!_ “And he’s told the captain, has he?”

“I expect so.”

“Great. Fan-smegging-tastic.” Lister squeezed Frankie protectively and kissed the top of her furry head. He didn’t need any of this, not now, and neither did Frankie. He spun on his heel and marched over to the usual hiding place.

“What are you doing?” Rimmer demanded.

“What do you think I’m doing, genius? I’ve got to hide her!”

“They’ll find her in the end, you know.”

Lister waited until Frankenstein was safely out of sight to let loose his anger. “No, they won’t. And if they do, it’ll only be because _you_ snitched to save your own skin!” The catch in his voice startled him; he hadn’t realised he was on the verge of tears.

Rimmer turned pale, but he folded his arms defiantly and glared at the floor. “Thanks, Lister. It’s nice to know that you think so highly of me.”

“I…” Lister threw up his hands in disgust. Rimmer had no right to be so bitter, no right at all. “It doesn’t matter what I think, though, does it?” he said dully. “Least of all to you.”

The second collision was also inevitable. After a few seconds of tear-blinded confusion, Lister found himself staring up into the eyes he lov - no. No. They’d lied to him. The tenderness he saw in them was a lie. The arms that gently pulled him into their warmth were lying.

He didn’t care. He wanted them to stay like this, holding on, breaths and heartbeats synchronising.

“All right, where’s the cat?”

They jumped apart at the gruff voice. Lister drew himself up to his full height and faced the security officer. “What cat?”

“Don’t be stupid, Lister, we know you’re hiding a cat. Now, where is it?”

“I don’t know what cat you mean. Sir.”

The officer turned his menacing stare on Rimmer. “You must have some idea,” he barked, looking pointedly at their almost-joined hands.

Rimmer blanched even more. Lister closed his eyes and waited for the axe to fall.

“I haven’t got a clue what you mean, sir.”

  


”What’s it like, being in stasis?” Lister whispered as they trailed behind Todhunter, hands still millimetres from touching. Smeg, but it was so good to talk normally again.

Rimmer shrugged. “It’s not bad,” he mumbled sheepishly. He’d of course told Lister all about his boothing. “There is some disorientation when you get out, but that passes.” He actually took Lister’s hand and squeezed it then, and Lister’s heart lifted; Rimmer looked happy for the first time since the Observation Dome, even though he was forfeiting wages, scuppering his chances at promotion, et cetera.

They shared a final look behind Todhunter’s back. _See you later,_ Lister mouthed, and Rimmer’s eyes went soft with hope.

Lister carried that hope into the stasis booth, where he promptly became a non-event mass with a quantum probability of zero.

\------

A little over three million years later, Commander Arnold “Ace” Rimmer guided his sleek red ship onto a long, narrow strip of sand. Not a bad spot to come out from his first jump, this. Clear blue water as far as the eye could see, with a little beach here and there to accommodate non-marine life forms.

Such as the two men walking along the shore a short distance away. The shorter one raising his chin proudly as if spoiling for a fight. The other, who looked strangely familiar, making various flailing gestures as he argued back. Then the two suddenly coming together and standing entwined, heedless of the rising tide and Ace’s wave.

He would go over and say hello. Only manners. Besides, the dimension jump drive was supposed to take him to another version of himself; maybe the lovebirds could point him in the right direction…


End file.
